ALBUM REVIEW: Float & Aperture – Boss Keloid
Do you remember the weird kid at school? Maybe you were the weird kid at school. Never quite fitting in, not cool enough to be one of the cool kids, not sporty enough to be on the football team, not one of the mean girls, not really someone that anyone paid much attention to. Just. Plain. Weird. Invariably though, as everyone grew up a bit, it soon became apparent that the weird kid was actually pretty funny. Interesting. Talented. Unique. And maybe you realised that you should have been hanging around with that kid the whole time.
Wigan prog-doom-stoner outfit BOSS KELOID are very much the weird kid of the UK underground scene. While everyone else is trying to join in with the lunchtime kickabout that the older tougher lads have started, BOSS KELOID are standing in the corner of the playground, talking to themselves and playing some unfathomable game involving sticks. Now sixteen years into their careers, this is a band that has never stood still. From the almost PRIMUS-esque sludgy hardcore madness of their 2010 debut EP, through the fuzz-heavy stoner prog grooves of Herb Your Enthusiasm to the triumphant, grunge-tinged celebrations of life that were 2018’s Melted On The Inch and 2021’s Family The Smiling Thrush.
Float And Aperture sees the band return after five and a half years, during which time they have developed a new and more collaborative approach to writing, relying less on guitarist Paul Swarbrick’s huge, complex riffs and allowing the songs to develop more organically. On first track Breeze it’s not immediately clear how successful this strategy has been as it’s a while before Alex Hurst’s vocals kick in to ground the jam-heavy noodling that makes up the opening bars. On further listens, though, you have to wonder whether this is entirely deliberate, as the opening of Breeze almost sounds like an orchestra tuning up before all coming together properly, almost as if the band is playing with the listener’s expectations of which direction they have gone in this time. It’s a relatively serene and understated start to the record though and as it progresses through its nine minute running time it shows Hurst’s wonderful vocal range and as each passage moves on to the next the life-affirming vibes of Family The Smiling Thrush very much come to the fore again.
Pedestal continues along a similar vein, exploring both the positive and negative sides of isolation and is built around a falsetto vocal hook weirdly reminiscent of eighties pop gods TEARS FOR FEARS. Musically, the staccato guitars weave around the constantly moving basslines of Liam Pendlebury-Green and ever-driving rhythms of drummer Ste Arands and here the band seems to have created a perfect blend between the musical styles explored on their previous two albums. Third track, and first single, Landslide is where things really start to kick off. Another nine minute epic, this is BOSS KELOID at their absolute best. It is a song that is at once incredibly catchy and impenetrably complex in its structure and time signatures. Never really a band to work around big verse/chorus conventions, this song could well be an entire album in its own right and like all of the band’s best work, it immediately makes you want to listen to it again to see what you missed. The weird, groovy main riff switches and changes throughout, before finally returning in crushingly heavy style and these twists and turns show how much the band relishes in confounding expectations. This complexity never undermines the vocal hooks though and Hurst delivers them in spades here, despite apparently singing about his life falling apart: “Does anybody know how it came to be? And will you humour me?”
Weight follows, starting as a gentle melancholic journey through a crumbling relationship before Swarbrick’s furious riffs combine again with Arands’ astonishing drumming to create massively heavy grooves that are both crushing and beautiful in their weight. This is the case across all seven tracks here: a unique combination of heaviness and beauty that makes it unlike anything else you will hear this year. Despite closing track Sanguine being one of the shorter tracks on the record, it is still playful and deep in its musicality.
Float & Aperture is the perfect follow-up to Family The Smiling Thrush and sees BOSS KELOID at the height of their creative powers. Challenging, deep and intensely rewarding, this is everything progressive music should be and so much more. It is time to embrace that weird kid from school. It will be the best decision you ever made.
Rating: 9/10
Float & Aperture is set for release on October 23rd via Church Road Records.
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